Maybe isn’t an ordinary name for a cat, but for the tiny Siamese mix it seemed appropriate . She had been found on the streets and was picked up by Johnston County Animal Services in Smithfield, NC. The staff posted her on Petfinder, where Michelle Garrett saw her listing and …

]]>Maybe isn’t an ordinary name for a cat, but for the tiny Siamese mix it seemed appropriate . She had been found on the streets and was picked up by Johnston County Animal Services in Smithfield, NC. The staff posted her on Petfinder, where Michelle Garrett saw her listing and packed up her two daughters, 6 and 3, and went to meet the kitty.

“She was in rough shape with an upper respiratory infection,” the Raleigh, NC, woman says. “Her eyes wouldn’t open all the way, and she was still recovering from being spayed and being treated for ear mites.

Joanna adores Maybe the cat.

The girls were smitten the moment they met her, but Michelle wondered how the cat would react to a noisy household.

“As I held this little whiff of a cat, an alarm bell went off to alert shelter staff to a car in the loading area, and the kitty didn’t even flinch. I actually said, “Yep. She’s the one. If she can handle that level of noise without moving so much as a muscle, she can handle the noise my kids are going to throw her way.”

She decided to adopt her. “I took her to the vet before even taking her home, and left with several prescriptions and a semi-responsive cat,” Michelle says. “We genuinely weren’t sure if she was going to make it or not, which is how she earned the name Maybe.”

These days she’s a lively and healthy kitty, and there is no maybe about how much she loves her family. She follows them around the house and has endless patience with the girls, who like to carry her around in baskets, dance with her and tickle her paws.

“As we say daily around here,” Michelle says, “she’s the best cat in the history of cats!”

Ruby Yun had recently adopted a kitten, but something drew her to look at cats for adoption on Petfinder. There, she saw a story that gripped her heart. A Siamese kitten named Chai Lai, listed by the Regional Animal Shelter in King William, VA, had been brought to the shelter as …

]]>Ruby Yun had recently adopted a kitten, but something drew her to look at cats for adoption on Petfinder. There, she saw a story that gripped her heart. A Siamese kitten named Chai Lai, listed by the Regional Animal Shelter in King William, VA, had been brought to the shelter as a stray with a burned tail, and the injury appeared to have been intentional. The kitty’s tail had to be removed.

Peanut has settled into his new home after a terrible ordeal.

Ruby called the shelter to get more information and learned that the shelter had posted a fundraiser on its Facebook page to help with Chai Lai’s medical expenses and had an excellent response. Now he was ready for a permanent home.

“The next thing I knew,” the Manassas, VA, woman says, “I was driving hours away to visit this kitten and, within an hour of playing with him, decided to adopt him.

She changed the tiny kitten’s name to Peanut. “It is amazing how loving and connected he is to people after such a terrible, cruel thing had been done to him,” she says.

Pets like Peanut who have suffered abuse have an amazing capacity for forgiveness, fostered by the loving care he received at the shelter and in his new home.